AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Read it like a child
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`The first thing you notice in this book is the absence of provocation and shock that are central to her writings...
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ORIGINALLY written in Malayalam, A Childhood in Malabar is a collection of reminiscences by Kamala Das. Kamala Das? They look the other way. Phoney, barmy, schmaltzy, they say. That is the worst thing one could say about Kamala Das, one of the most creative minds in Kerala today. But they do say so.
If you want to get at the heart of a fictional work, you need not necessarily know its author from close quarters. But Kamala Das is an exception, simply because she is more fictional than her writings. She likes to astound her readers, and to achieve this, she would go to any length. She did it in My Story that recounted her amorous adventures, to the shock of her innumerable readers, her family, her friends and above all, her husband. Recently, in a French film on Indian writers, she went so far as to say that she brought it upon herself to write novels and stories to help her husband financially. That was sheer mendacity, for, all of us know that her husband was a high official and that she belonged to one of the aristocratic, rich families in Kerala.
Kamala Das is a disturbed soul, constantly in search of herself. When she couldn't find her identity in her original name Kamala, she changed it into Madhavikutty. That is the name by which she is known in Kerala and under which she wrote all her stories in Malayalam. She was born into an orthodox Hindu family, but she changed her religion, becoming Surayya. But did changing names and proselytism help her find her identity? No. She continues her search, provoking, shocking, mocking at her readers. But go to her and talk to her for a while, you would find how fragile her soul is, how sensitive her mind, how angel-faced she is in spite of her advanced age.
Of late, she has been writing very little. I have been craving to read something new from her. And then A Childhood in Malabar came my way. I read it avidly, though I have already gone through some parts in its original. Reading and rereading Kamala Das is never frittering away time.
The first thing you notice in this book is the absence of provocation and shock that are central to her writings, so much so that if her book does not astound you a trifle, you feel cheated. Is that because this book is about her childhood memories? May be. Any way, here, making a departure from her habit, she spares us the provocation. The book is as lucid as a child's world.
The preface and the epilogue throw light on the circumstances that led to the writing of this book. Her psychoanalyst friend, Ramanlal Patel, forces her to recall her childhood experiences, people and events. Which she does. And, "as memory after memory surfaced, accompanied by fragments of speech, I felt them explode within me like a shower of fireworks... " and the book was born. But, alas, there are no fireworks in it.
The book is divided into two parts, "Yesterdays" and "Days before Yesterday". As it does not go further down, we assume it is a fragmented memory. As a rule, childhood memories play a mandatory role in her writings, giving a touch of nostalgia to her stories and poems. She turns intensely lyrical while writing about the days she had spent in Kolkata. Here, as the title mentions, she is gathering memories of the days she spent at home, and it lacks both intensity and lyricism.
She grew up in a village. Fantasy is so blended into childhood memories of village folk that they are inseparable from each other. For Kamala Das, the earliest memory is that of "a bare-breasted woman standing at a great height, on the roof of a huge building, dangling me over the low wall of a terrace". As we go on reading the book, the fantasy gets accentuated. She tells us about a 300-years-old parrot that can read your future. She evokes images of sorcery and black magic.
Though gracefully rendered into English by Gita Krishnankutty, the book has nothing tangible to offer its readers except yakshis and gandharvas and Bourbon biscuits filled with chocolate cream. The string of episodes that forms the book are perceived from the point of view of a child. Which is why A Childhood in Malabar appears to be a children's story book camouflaged as an adult's book of memoirs. But what's wrong with it? So long as there is a child in all of us, it is worth reading.
M. MUKUNDAN
A Childhood in Malabar, Kamala Das, translated from the Malayalam by Gita Krishnankutty, Penguin India, p.217, Rs. 200.
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